Manufacturing

Players in the electric vehicle (EV) hope the government will bring down the goods and services tax (GST) on EV batteries to 5% and lower duties on raw materials required for cell manufacturing. They also call for easy, low-cost EV finance to drive customer adoption. 

Antora Energy says its new 2 MW factory will make thermophotovoltaic cells for thermal storage applications. The cells are based on III-V semiconductors and reportedly have a heat-to-electricity conversion efficiency of more than 40%.

The State government has signed agreements for various giga-scale projects across renewable energy generation, solar manufacturing, pumped hydro storage, and green hydrogen.                                                                                                                

The central government and the state government of Karnataka have signed an agreement with Bengaluru-headquartered Rajesh Exports to lend support and a tailormade incentive package for its 5 GWh lithium cell factory in Karnataka.

Qatari researchers have looked at the degree to which cleaning robots could threaten the physical integrity of solar panels. They found that cleaning machines have a very minimal impact and that modules of similar sizes tend to exhibit roughly the same amount of vibration.

Japan’s Shintora Kosan has developed a novel water jet technology to recover glass from end-of-life PV modules. It says it can pulverize the solar cells and the backsheets without damaging the glass.

The US-based company has been granted patents in India and China for its smart battery management system that monitors the thermal storage capacity of the phase-change material and automatically adjusts the power output of the battery packs and cells.

US tracker manufacturer GameChange Solar’s latest product launch follows its recently announced decision to increase its annual domestic manufacturing capacity to 24 GW.

Longi Solar said it will invest CNY 42.5 billion ($6.65 billion) in 100 GW of wafer capacity and 50 GW of solar cell capacity in Shaanxi province, China.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has achieved remarkable efficiency and stability for a wide-bandgap all-perovskite tandem solar cell. The scientist developed the device with an inverted architecture and used gas quenching instead of an antisolvent in the manufacturing process.